Shalane Flanagan Learning How To Stand the Heat Before Rio

She’s been on the starting line at three Olympic Games. She’s faced the world’s best runners at the Boston Marathon—three times. She brought home a bronze medal from Beijing in 2008, which she earned despite suffering a nasty case of food poisoning.

But nothing ever rattled Shalane Flanagan quite as much as throwing the first pitch at Fenway Park during marathon weekend in April.

“That’s probably the most nervous I’ve ever seen Shalane, which was really weird,” said Amy Cragg, her Bowerman Track Club training partner and U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials champion. “Normally she’s the cool, collected one.”

Flanagan, 34, who grew up in nearby Marblehead, Massachusetts, had every right to be anxious. Her parents, former teachers, and high school friends were among the Red Sox faithful in the stands ready to watch their hometown woman—along with 2016 U.S. Olympic marathon teammates Cragg, Desiree Linden, and Meb Keflezighi—throw that ceremonial pitch.

Given the signal, Cragg, Linden, and Keflezighi threw in unison. Flanagan froze. She looked over and realized she was the only one still holding a baseball.

“I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is my nightmare.’ I had practiced my wind-up and everything,” Flanagan said. “I freaked out and just threw it as hard as I could. It was really fun. But I was really nervous. I won’t lie.”

Flanagan can add the experience to the many she’s already collected on the proverbial road to Rio, which began dramatically at the Olympic Trials in February. She and Cragg led convincingly for most of the race, until Flanagan succumbed to the oven-like heat of Los Angeles and struggled, dehydrated, through the final 5K to finish third and drop into Cragg’s arms just after the finish line. She now recalls it as “the hardest three miles of my life—and maybe the slowest.”

She made the team, which was her priority, but minutes afterward her focus switched to one of the most important recovery periods of her career—and what she needed to do differently to prepare for the predicted heat and humidity of Brazil in August.

At the finish line of the Trials, she received IV fluids for the first time, to help her rehydrate quickly. Flanagan thinks that decision saved her from what could have been an arduous few weeks of getting back on her feet, which may have ultimately affected her Olympic goals.

“I resisted getting an IV but a lot of the doctors there were insisting that I needed it,” Flanagan said. “It would have taken a really long time to get those fluids in orally. So the IV really speeded up my recovery. It actually made me realize probably why they are illegal [in competition] under most circumstances—my core temperature immediately went down. If I hadn’t had that, I would have had a much longer process.”

After she made it home to Portland, Oregon, fatigue took over. Finishing in 2:29, Flanagan had run her slowest marathon. (Her personal best is 2:21:14.) But the pace on a flat course, as opposed to hillier terrain, resulted in minimal muscular damage to overcome, so it was a matter of sleeping it off and then getting back at it.

Involved in a number of projects that demanded running, such as filming a Boston Marathon documentary, Flanagan didn’t have much of a choice anyway.

“I didn’t have to run hard or long and it was probably good because it flushed out my legs a little bit,” she said. “It’s funny. Everyone who sees me since the Trials expects me to still be hobbling around or using a cane or something…apparently it left a lasting memory on people. It scarred them just as much as it scarred me.”

What was more jarring to Flanagan was the discovery of a personal weakness in race-day fueling and hydration. Known for her meticulous preparation and steely resolve in just about any competitive situation, she realized that she had an area that needed improvement. Los Angeles was the only marathon she’s run in such extreme conditions, except for the London Olympics, which presented lower temperatures but higher humidity. In both races she struggled with fluids sloshing around in her gut—and in February she vowed to figure out solutions before going to Rio.

She and her coach, Jerry Schumacher, decided to go to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for testing and advice. Using some of the latest technology available, a team of physiologists, dietitians, and medical experts are analyzing Flanagan’s physiology to figure out exactly what she needs to ingest during a marathon in varying conditions and how her body absorbs different ratios of electrolytes and fluids.

In order to do that, Flanagan and Cragg ran for 90 minutes on treadmills located in an environmental chamber set to sea level, with a temperature cranked to the upper 80s and humidity at 75 percent, to simulate conditions likely worse than what they will encounter in Brazil. Linden is scheduled for similar testing in the coming weeks.

Robert Chapman, USA Track & Field associate director of sports science and medicine, said the past 20 years of weather reports on the day and at the time of the women’s marathon in Rio (9:30 a.m. on August 14), show an average high temperature between 76 and 78 degrees and percent humidity in the low 70s. In those 20 years of data, Rio has had four days warmer than 80 degrees and one day that didn’t break 70 degrees. In other words, the weather has been consistent.

During the test, among the variables that the staff measured were sweat rate, sweat composition, core body temperature, heart rate, foot strike frequency, biomechanics (and how form altered as fatigue set in), and psychological perception of the effort. From all the measurements, the experts are creating specific recommendations for what individual athletes should put in a fluid bottle and how much is needed every 5K in the expected conditions, to maximize performance.

“It just takes one variable out of the equation,” Chapman said. “They know what they need to do [for hydration] and can focus on other aspects rather than worrying about it. For Shalane, it helps her get peace of mind, and she can practice it in training. She can train the gut to get used to it and manage it and get ready for it.”

That peace of mind extends beyond the athlete, in Flanagan’s case.

“My family was like, ‘Please, do not put us through that again—watching you suffer like that was not really fun,’” she said. “So we are figuring out a different hydration plan, how to keep my core temperature down, and seeing what I’m missing and how to delay the onset of overheating.”

While all the results of testing are not in yet, it was easy to classify Flanagan as a “heavy sweater.” She perspired almost three times more than Cragg.

“I feel relieved that I’ll have this information,” she said.

The early stages of training are underway. Cragg and Flanagan had a five-week altitude stint in Flagstaff, Arizona, for base mileage and workouts. Now they’ll head back to Portland for more than a month before returning to high altitude. They’ll add in two weeks of heat training in a location to be determined before the Games. They are also scheduled to run the San Diego Rock ’n’ Roll Half Marathon on June 4 as a tuneup.

And on a recent trip to Rio to check out the marathon course and the city, Flanagan said she enjoyed the sneak peek.

“You hear so much in the media and on TV [about Rio] that sounds, generally, more negative,” she said. “After the trip we feel excited to go back, we don’t feel as intimidated. To know what to expect—where we’re going to stay, where we’re going to eat, and all the little logistics—can make a better race possible.”

Indeed, Flanagan has learned that minimizing the curve balls can, in fact, make all the difference.

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